FRINGE 2018

After four years of wowing audiences at festivals across the UK and Europe, the award-winning Loud Poets return for their fifth year at the Edinburgh Fringe and this time they're bringing their Fantastical Game Show Spectacular! With Loud Poets' special blend of fist-thumping, pint-drinking, side-tickling poetry and some of the UK's top poets going head to head, this poetic fist fight will make sure the spoken word revolution is filmed in front of a live studio audience. So come on down and let's play Loud Poets: The Fantastical Game Show Spectacular!

GARETH MUTCH: WANTS MUTCH MORE

We here at Loud Poets are very excited to be producing our first ever comedy show for the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. After sell-out shows in 2016 and 2017 Gareth Mutch returns with a bucket list to help fix his tragic life. What do you do when you wake up aged 24 and realise you have seen, done, experienced, and achieved nothing? Well, comedian Gareth Mutch made a list: a roadmap to sorting out his life and figuring out what it is he actually wants. Join Gareth as he looks to travel, get fit, find love, and rebuild a life hijacked by stand-up comedy. This is Gareth's first full solo run at the Fringe and he'll be performing at the amazing Gilded Balloon.

Fringe 2017

For 2017 Fringe Loud Poets brought a brand-new show to the Edinburgh Fringe for their fourth consecutive year, and it was a big one. In today's climate of runaway commercialism and a constant barrage of advertising, Loud Poets asked: what's the role of poetry? And what exactly are poets selling you? Drawing on their diverse backgrounds in theatre, dance, music and more, the poets performed a variety of original solo and multi-voice pieces showcasing the best spoken word has to offer. The poets were accompanied by live music from Scottish band Ekobirds, plus visuals and short films from cinematographer Perry Jonsson.

Reviews

praise of our monthly nights

If you want your poetry nights to have the hushed and genteel air of a village library, you better give Loud Poets a wide berth [...] Loud by name, and louder by nature, the Loud Poets strive to create environments that permit a healthy degree of reaction from their audience, turning up their own volume to encourage their guests to do the same.

— Bare Fiction

If you haven’t heard of The Loud Poets you’ve got to check them out. They’re a collection of incredible artists. [...] they’re such an inspiring and welcoming collective - and they put together incredible events. I could talk for hours about each and every one of them and how talented they all are.

Their voices were harmonious and their compositions synchronized; I was enthralled by their performance. The show, 50 minutes long, saw the two poets recounting original poems about social and parental issues, memories, past loves & children, while taking off their ‘social clothes’ to stand naked in front of a bunch of strangers. If one imagines a poetry show to be just about love poems, as YouTube has taught us, this was not the case. Katie and Kevin succeeded in capturing the attention of the entire audience, which ranged from teenagers to couples in their sixties.

— The Tribe

Edinburgh is dripping with literary history, and it’s easy to lose a day perusing the musty wares of the West Port’s many secondhand bookshops or get a high-octane hit from the city’s best wordsmiths. In addition to events at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, there are spoken word nights all over the city. Loud Poets, Rally & Broad (rallyandbroad.com) and Neu! Reekie! offer noisy slam poetry, eclectic cabaret and unforgettable evenings – all at bargain prices.

— The Guardian

Striking comic books are often stitched together using bright, vivid characters between multi-coloured pages which are filled with untamed slapstick from start to finish. These stories are crammed into fairly short magazines whereby one-liners and plots appear inside speech-bubbles materialising from character’s mouths, filling hearts with glee as, on a weekly or monthly basis, each personality’s little idiosyncrasies proceed to leave their own animated impression on us, the readers. And herein lies the successful formula which Edinburgh’s Loud Poets collective abide by.

— Stephen Watt, author of "Spit".

PRaise from further afield

I found myself engaged by what I was hearing. Not only that, but also motivated to give it a go myself. That’s something I can very rarely say when I hear poetry, as often I’m overwhelmed by inaccessible language or self-indulgent fart-arsery. (A man of language, me?) None of that could be said for Loud Poets.

— Fringe Review

PRAISE FROM our 2017 Fringe show

★★★★★ - The Student

★★★★★ - VoiceMag

★★★★ - Fringe Guru

★★★★ - Broadway Baby

Think you know poetry? Think again. Loud Poets are back for another Fringe, proclaiming a new breed of pint-drinking spoken word for the masses. Thoughtful and inclusive, it’s thin on polo necks and rich in subject matter [...] Down-to-earth and easy to access, this is a brilliant introduction to spoken word with a surprisingly broad appeal. The Loud Poets wisely don’t try to compete with more the flamboyant side of the Edinburgh Fringe, but instead present an understated, slick performance that will leave you pondering the content for days after

— Fringe Guru

The night combines poetry, live music and film in a way that has audience members mesmerised from the onset. The show skilfully sways from amorous to poignant, political to playful and right back around again.

— Broadway Baby

A larger than life show that will make you fall in love with performance poetry.

— VoiceMag

A firm favourite on the Fringe.

— Edinburgh Spotlight

audience reactions to our 2017 fringe show

As a reforming performance poet, I was interested in seeing this show, and it didn’t disappoint. Unlike a lot of poetry evenings, it was not people reading platitudes from a sheet of paper, rhyming love with dove and expecting applause, this was proper, fist shaking, roof-raising poetry that hit home. Immersive spoof adverts introduced the show, and featured throughout it, whilst a tight, and talented four piece band played electric guitar, keyboard, cahon and violin across a wide range of genre, from Scottish party music, to music concrete, incorporating moods and sounds behind the poets, giving more visceral energy than just hearing the words by themselves. The four performers in Loud Poets, Kevin McLean, Doug Garry, Catherine Wilson, Katie Ailes and guest Vitoria McNulty tackled a wide range of topics, from love, to nuclear war, the end of time, parent-hood, and the drunken nights we have all learnt to either forget, or regret.

Relevant, meaningful, accessible, joyful, disturbing. You don’t need to be ‘into’ poetry to enjoy this. It’s an entertaining, quality production and probably the best show I’ve seen so far. I can’t recommend this enough. Go and see it. It’s brilliant and spoke to our whole group (ages 20 to 60) we all loved it.

PRAISE FROM our 2016 Fringe show

★★★★ - Broadway Baby

★★★★ - TV Bomb

These people are sensational performers, engaging effortlessly with the crowd in a down-to-earth manner that puts everybody at ease [...] they are outspoken, human, and skillful. This is an act not to be missed.

— Broadway Baby

The Loud Poets are quite possibly the most reliably entertaining spoken word show at the Fringe [...] when you roll up to a Loud Poets event, you can rest assured that you’re in for something of quality.

— TVBomb

PRAISE OF OUR 2015 FRINGE SHOW

★★★★ - The Scotsman

★★★★ - Broadway Baby

★★★★ - TV Bomb

★★★★½ - The Student

★★★★½ - Edinburgh Student Arts Review

Throughout there’s a humour; poignancy and most of all a confidence which serves to inspire.